Snippets of the Pit
by Soccus
Summary: "If Starscream were to work on a solution to the human factor; conducting intense, time-consuming research, then he would not be able to interfere with Lord Megatron's plans, nor would he be able to strut around like he was the pride and joy of the faction." Starscream has other plans, especially for the rest of the Decepticons. G1, AU with OCs
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Transformers and all its affiliates are owned by Hasbro.

AN: Just a little insight into a new fic of mine. More information to follow in first chapter

There will be OCs in this fic, just to warn those who do not like them.

**Edited 13/01/2013**

**I rewrote this since looking through the story I noticed the prologue didn't lead into it very well. It was also really short which kinda bugged me.  
**

**This takes place post Season 2 (sometime in 1985).  
**

**If you are looking for  
**

**a) an epic Robot/human romance  
**

**b) the most perfect, awesome OCs that ever existed (with perfect waist-length hair and glittering/shining/glistening/emerald/topaz orbs and a curvy but slim figure)  
**

**c) lol!crackfic, complete with woobiefied Starscream, loving TC, adorable Skywarp and more OOCness  
**

**please look elsewhere.  
**

Enjoy. :)

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Prologue

* * *

Astrotrain, Swindle and Dead End trudged into the current Decepticon HQ looking like they felt quite sorry for themselves. The small Decepticon team had just returned from what was supposed to be an undercover raid on a powerplant. As usual these days their mission had failed and the team had returned in disgrace.

What was not usual was that not a single Autobot had been involved, no, instead their entire attack had been rebuffed by _humans_.

Humans wielding modified Cybertronian weapons.

This put Megatron in a foul mood after finding this out during the following debriefing (of course his foul mood was almost a status quo these days); in fact the atmosphere was so oppressive that even Starscream didn't have the courage to make a snarky comment.

The main problem with fighting humans was not their relative adaptability compared to the transformers, their finally getting their hands on decent weaponry (although it did help), their tiny, by comparison, size which made them hard to squish and harder to aim at, nor (Primus forbid) any wayward _compassion_ towards them.

The problem was fairly simple: humanity had not been fighting the Decepticons for millions of years. Thus the Decepticons had a harder time predicting the actions of the humans, especially when these tied up with human society; a virtually unknown part of the equations that were supposed to represent humanity.

The Autobots by comparison were predictable; a choice between little sentient beings about to be incinerated and the hydro-electric powerplant being attacked (without human casualties) would always lead to the former being the priority.

(Unfortunately because the Autobots _did _outnumber the Decepticons they could usually afford to send two separate teams to the incidents, hence why the strategy often didn't work.)

When Autobots and humans fought together they mostly followed the Autobot strategies and although this did occasionally (ok, _more _than occasionally) lead to Decepticon defeat ultimately they never ended quite as badly as the most recent one had for their small team.

It posed quite a challenge to the Decepticon command for the next few days. Megatron simply wanted to annihilate all of humanity and grab all the planet's energy -in other words, the usual plan- while Starscream took the opposing stance and screeched that they should simply enslave all of humanity to collect the energy for them -again, business as usual- and Soundwave stayed quiet and considered the issue.

He did pay _some _attention to the proceedings at hand, just in case the argument between his superior officers escalated but most of his processing power was working on the larger issue.

The problem and the solution were quite clear to him; _Problem: insufficient data on human culture, Result: Inability to predict actions, Solution: Learn more about human culture._

What they were lacking was an appropriate method to conduct this research; they were outnumbered by the Autobots as it was so none of their own could be spared and unfortunately humanity didn't seem to keep an extensive record of their culture, society and history in any of the databases Soundwave had come across. There was a little bit to be learned from human television, however actually watching that drivel dulled processors to an excessive degree, as was repeatedly demonstrated by Skywarp.

Naturally Soundwave could simply continue to monitor the communication channels, which weren't _always_ as processor-numbing as television seemed to be, but analysing that data and deriving conclusions on human society was not his forte nor could Soundwave be spared from his duties as this would be fairly time-consuming.

It would have to be shunted onto someone who wasn't vitally important and could process such data in an efficient manner.

Or someone who had to be kept out of the way of important proceedings.

That someone (at least in Soundwave's reasoning) would have to be Starscream. As of late he'd been nothing but a nuisance and getting him out of the way, at least for a while, would quite probably improve the situation for the Decepticons.

Soundwave's visor seemed to glow a little brighter as he considered the matter. He and Starscream had never got on well and calling the TIC a drone certainly didn't help so this was a matter of some (rather petty) vengeance, as well as seeking to improve the situation.

If Starscream were to work on a solution to the human factor, conducting intense, time-consuming research then he would not be able to interfere with Lord Megatron's plans, nor would he be able to strut around like he was the pride and joy of the faction (definitely not the latter).

Of course this would have to be worded carefully; if Starscream caught wind of the fact that he was simply being... _distracted_ then all pit would break loose, and it would be likely that the Constructicons would have to replace all their audial sensors after the ensuing screaming fit.

Meanwhile the argument, which had evolved into a shouting match as per usual, had been resolved, yet again, by a shot with Megatron's cannon and Starscream was left alone to stumble or drag his way to the repair bay (where the Constructicons no doubt expected him after hearing of this officer's meeting).

Once the doors had shut behind the Seeker, Soundwave turned towards Megatron and began to outline his suggestion.

* * *

As it happened, when Starscream was informed of his latest "task" he was none too pleased, and throuugh a mixture of flattery and cajoling managed to assign himself a far more complex and resource-guzzling project than the one Soundwave had suggested: create their own spies to collect information on the human race.

Megatron only allowed it because he thought it would be a fruitless endevour that would keep Starscream out of his way for some time before the jet's pride would have to be swallowed and he gave up in a humiliating defeat that would put him in his place for quite some time.

Soundwave was simply glad (along with most of the rest of the army) not to have to put up with audial-shattering screeches anymore.

The SIC was not known for his cunning mind for nothing though. He soon worked out that he'd been played for a fool and had nearly no way out of this situation without significant damage to his pride and reputation. On the one hand he could just call Soundwave and Megatron out on the distraction which would mean he'd have to admit he'd been tricked into it, on the other he could persevere and fail, bringing more embarassment to his name. Quite a conundrum for him.

Starscream, being the contrary tricky creature he was, shoved those options out his afterburners and came up with a third one: to succeed at his task, when all of those in the know thought he would fail.

Megatron would have to praise him for his hard work and congratulate him on his achievements.

Victory was Starscream's.

* * *

**Review and tell me what you think please.**

Thank you.

Eli


	2. Creation

Disclaimer: Transformers and all its affiliates are owned by Hasbro.

AN: So... my first transformers fic and my first fic with OCs.

The story will mostly revolve around the OCs and their interaction with the D-Cons. There might be humour (depending on your sense of humour), and there will be rather dark bits. It's not very cohesive all the time, as it merely serves as an insight into their lives

Anything extra or irrelevant to the main story (such as the Autobots' view of the insanity of the Decepticons, or the truth about a later chapter "Decepticon Christmas") will be published in a separate story.

This is a G1 AU, where I take a more serious view of things (i.e. the Decepticons do not always lose).

Something to remember (also mentioned in the prologue) is that the Decepticons do not like humans and know virtually nothing about them. This also means that they do not see experimentation of humans as immoral/torture/abuse and it will not be addressed as such from their POVs (although it might just be the Decepticons being Decepticons and not caring about torturing/abusing someone).

This chapter takes place in 1989.

**Edit 21/01/2013: Added a bit more to the chapter and rewrote some bits. It should be a bit more coherent now.**

**The OCs' sides of events are not relevant until they get a bit older, until then it's more the Decepticons who hold the stage.  
**

* * *

Warning: This is not a happy chapter. Although not explicitly mentioned or seen to be as such, there is human experimentation involved, cruelty, leaving the weak to die etc. **I should also warn for a gloating Starscream.**

You can, however, laugh at Thundercracker's misfortune. If you're really that mean (I am, I wrote it).** I seem to like torturing him, although he can be a bit melodramatic when I write him.  
**

* * *

Starscream, feeling pleased with himself, rechecked his subjects for the umpteenth time for glitches in their systems, that is the cybertronian ones. Four years after he had begun the experimenting he had finally been able to create stable cybertronian-human hybrids with all the features needed for them to infiltrate human society for the Decepticons.

Megatron was demanding results, had been gleefully demanding results ever since this project had first started. Starscream had figured out early on that his _leader _wasn't actually expecting Starscream to succeed, and had only assigned him this task to humiliate the SIC as well as keep him busy. Unfortunately for Megatron, Starscream was adept at weaseling his way out of problems and had decided to humitiate the Gunformer by fulfilling the task set for him and that meant it would take time. It galled Starscream that at least one of Megatron's objectives, wasting lots of Starscream's time and keeping him occupied, would be fulfilled but the end result of actually accomplishing something in this pathetic stalemate of a war would be fantastic.

In addition to this Megatron was not trained as Starscream was in the sciences and could come up with no rebukes or arguments when the scientist justifiably requested things or asked for more time. The Air Commander could come up with as much -what was the human term?- bullshit as he wanted to and Megatron couldn't do a thing about it.

It gave Starscream a lot of satisfaction.

That said, it wasn't like there _weren't _problems with the experiment; there had been moments when he, in utter despair, had nearly given up on the entire thing and only the image of Megatron's gloating, smug faceplate had driven him to keep going.

Some of the most frustrating parts had come in the beginning when most of the subjects had had to be terminated soon after their creation, not even completing the roughly nine-month gestation required for most humans to live without significant physical disabilities, even with accelerated aging. Their biological structure simply wasn't strong or resilient enough to hold cybertronian systems or materials, leaving the subjects with most of their bodily functions disabled.

So he'd had to rework some of the humans' genetic code -which the pathetic fleshlings had still not figured out- and limit the amount of metals and extra materials in them, eventually leading to a single stable hybrid.

Therein followed the next problem: sparks.

Cybertronian systems used their spark to power themselves, without it they died (it was also rumoured to be their "soul" to use a surprisingly fitting human word, but no one had ever scientifically proven this so Starscream was not inclined to believe it). Unfortunately the Decepticons had no current methods to create new sparks, so Autobots prisoners were the next step. For that Starscream had had to go all the way to Cybertron to find some existing sparks to use.

As it turned out, even the sparks of minibots were too large to fit into the hybrids, not to mention too powerful, so the unlikeliest of all bots _Soundwave_ came up with an idea: split a spark.

Cassette carriers were able to split their sparks to create their cassettes, however normal bots were not capable of this and Soundwave refused to become an experimental subject, so Starscream turned back to the Autobot prisoners and eventually managed to split off a miniscule spark without the Autobot dying. Terminating the new spark revealed that it still had a link to its "parent" (the Autobot died in screaming agony), which was disastrous, since it meant that Decepticons would have to be the "parents" to avoid any unwanted Autobot ideas in the hybrids, therefore putting said Decepticons at risk. On the other hand it would give the Decepticons greater control over them, as when Starscream had terminated a parent the new spark had snuffed out almost instantly.

After the trickiest problems had been solved with only little problems left to tweak, Starscream created his biggest batch of hybrids yet and set about to monitoring them through their gestation period and the earliest growth period. Artificial aging had brought about shapeless organic blobs, not humans or hybrids, so Starscream was left with no option but to wait it out. Since he had no intention of presenting useless little infants as his finished task, they had to at least be able to walk and talk, he'd had to wait at least two years beyong the gestation stage, terminating all weak or glitched hybrids until he was left with a few of the best.

Of the original 50 only five were left and these would be whittled down to three, a lucky number in Seeker culture -which was the only luck Starscream believed in- and also an excellent number for infiltration teams. Thus two of the surviving five would not make the cut; he'd have to run more tests to determine their compatibility with the other Decepticons in order to pick those most suitable of being "hosts", to use the human term for creatures who hosted _parasites._

Starscream had every intention of being one of these, as it would not do for him to lose any kind of advantage that he could hold high over the heads of the other Decepticons. It would also serve to irritate Soundwave; the TIC was their spymaster and took great pride in this and Starscream's "intrusion" would really not be welcomed.

Smirking at the thought of aggravating Soundwave, Starscream prepared to run the final tests, after which he'd present his results to his _exulted _leader.

* * *

The Decepticons watched warily as Starscream strutted towards the bridge. His strut was normal, that wasn't what had alarmed them.

It was the happy smile that raised hackles and sent the lower ranks into a tizzy.

While a Decepticon smiling wasn't always automatically cause for alarm, when it involved the aforementioned SIC no one took any chances, especially when he had almost been AWOL for four of the planet's solar cycles. Of course he had still been at the Decepticon base, holed up in his lab, it was just that few if any Decepticons had seen him apart from his wingmates and the other ranking officers. Well except for one trip to Cybertron, where he was also holed up in another lab according to the gossip they'd been able to gather from their comrades stationed back home.

What exactly he'd been doing there no one knew either; all the rumours said was that he'd been running some experiments on Autobot prisoners. Torturing Autobots was nothing new to the Decepticons but actual _experiments_? Those were more Shockwave's brand of science. Rumour also had it that the Autobots had tried to discover what he was up to and had broken in to the lab. It had been overheard when Shockwave had given the report to Megatron who, for some reason, hadn't seemed to upset about the break-in. From the lack of screaming in the background, and the sheer fact that Starscream hadn't

When had Starscream ever not taken the chance to rant at Megatron about something going wrong and then blame his leader for it? The fact that he hadn't done so had filled the Decepticons who had experienced the worst of Starscream's antics with dread. It seemed the time for Starscream's plan was at last at hand and the Decepticons could stop feeling uneasy about it.

That said, no one was willing to risk calling him out on whatever scheme he was bound to have cooked up simply because Starscream was a devious glitch who could talk himself out any situation, as had been proven by his continued survival even with his regular attempts to become the Decepticon leader.

So they did as Decepticons do. They bet on the outcome of the scheme, not whether it would _fail_, as all the Decepticons knew it would, but what sort of punishment Starscream would receive. The most popular one was merely a beating, since Starscream hadn't embarked on any schemes for as long as he'd been AWOL meaning that his punishment might be lighter… or his plan might just be more extreme (although what could be more extreme than trying to blow up the entire planet, or _Bruticus's creation_?).

There were also bets on what sort of plot it would be and how much Megatron knew, since their leader _undoubtedly _knew about it; otherwise there was no way Starscream would ever have been allowed off planet. Either Megatron would find it terribly amusing when the plan was acted out and it failed, or he was biding his time to give Starscream the punishment of a lifetime, he might even execute the SIC.

Scarcely a cycle after Starscream had strutted into the throne room with a smug expression, Thundercracker and Skywarp were summoned, presumably to drag the SIC back to the repairbay.

The Decepticons waited with anticipation for news of the plan and what its outcome had been.

* * *

Thundercracker stared at the results of Starscream's four years of experimentation with an expression of absolute revulsion. Said results were three little deformed flesh-bags inside isolation tanks, looking even more disgusting than _normal _organic creatures did.

The blue Seeker as a rule hated anything that couldn't fly or was organic. He therefore especially hated things that couldn't fly _and _were organic. Now he was going to have to deal with three groundbound organics on a regular basis.

It would be an understatement to say that he was not looking forward to this.

As soon as they had entered the bridge he'd been informed, along with Skywarp, what his new assignment was going to be by a still smug-looking Starscream whilst the other two commanding officers looked on with scowls, or as close to a scowl as Soundwave came to anyways.

Himself, Skywarp and Starscream were to be host sparks for Starscream's parasitic little hybrids on which the latter had apparently been working on the last few years. They, and eventually the rest of the Decepticons would gradually be acclimatised to the hybrids by way of making them look after the brats until the hybrids were capable of being independent, to a degree.

Skywarp, the idiot that he was, had said "Awesome! I'm gonna go tell everyone." and had promptly warped out. The fool was probably looking forward to this horror of horrors, seeing as Skywarp liked organics and was actually rather interested in them.

Thundercracker had just stood there while his processor stalled in complete and utter denial whilst Soundwave commed Skywarp, ordering him to return since the rest of the crew had not been briefed yet and it would not do for them to find out without being given all the facts.

Now, half a cycle later he'd had to accept that this was reality and he was going to be bound to a disgusting little flesh bag and forced to care for it. He hoped he could just delegate the duties to someone else, or at least not be made to touch the disgusting little things.

Oh how misplaced that hope was.

* * *

Just to clarify: the hybrids are physically two years old, mentally they have just been born and cannot walk or talk (not that Starscream knows this. He may be the human expert of the Decepticons but that doesn't mean he knows everything about them)

Your opinions matter to me, so comment please.

Eli


	3. Skywarp's Stupid

Chapter Three –Skywarp's own home brand of Stupidity

For short: Skywarp's Stupid

* * *

Disclaimer: Transformers and all its affiliates are owned by Hasbro.

AN: You may notice the chapters for this story are quite short, my reasoning being that

a) I'm still trying to get back into fanfiction after a long hiatus

b) It is called "Snippets" for a reason.

So Please don't expect 3k word chapters quite yet. I might get there eventually, but I'm quite happy with it as it is now.

* * *

Summary: Skywarp's Stupid strikes and TC is not pleased, not pleased at all.

Warnings: Extreme Stupidity? My failing at humour?

* * *

In hindsight, Thundercracker shouldn't have been surprised at Skywarp's actions.

The latter was acknowledged for three things: his teleporting abilities, his tendency to play painful, humiliating pranks and his stupidity.

There was, naturally, also his loyalty to Megatron, but with him being a Decepticon that was supposed to be a given fact (and proven not to be one by many of the faction, most notably Starscream, and even Thundercracker himself wasn't too iffy about being _loyal,_ since he had a fair amount of doubts about the cause).

Anyway, Skywarp and Stupid were best friends as far as everyone else knew. The lucky slaggers never had to deal with him for extended periods of time as Thundercracker had to, and thus had never realised that while Skywarp was infected with Stupid, the extent of said infection went far beyond anyone else's. It was the kind of stupid that made you think _this cannot be happening_, leaving it to repeat over and over in your processor until someone was kind enough to put you out of your misery or evil enough to confirm it was actually happening and then watch the impending crash.

Because of his Stupid, Skywarp managed to get away with a lot of things _that no one else could_!

Starscream would have loved to have been able to act out said Stupid, if only to proclaim _"My apologies Lord Megatron, it seems that my Null-ray misfired and hit you instead.",_ without being punished for it, never mind that Starscream had invented the Null-ray and that the majority of what came out of Starscream's mouth was bitching or lying.

Of course Skywarp's Stupid had to hit during "caretaker duties" (to use a more dignified term than the human one _babysitting_). Of course said duties had been taking care of Starscream's newest project, which happened to have _Megatron _of all mechs backing it and Skywarp and Thundercracker themselves, along with Starscream, bound to it, spark and all. Of course they had been threatened by both their leader and their Air Commander with grievous bodily harm, incarceration, torture -amongst other things- should anything go wrong.

Of course something did go wrong. Several somethings went wrong, and all of them in the space of three breems, which is how long it took Thundercracker to fetch their daily energon ration.

When he came back, he was greeted by a wall of sound almost as bad as his sonic booms, Skywarp was nowhere to be seen and the three things were left unattended.

At this moment, more than any other in his Decepticon career, Thundercracker just wanted to turn around and _fly_- as fast as he could and as far as he could _if only to get away from this madness._ He would never deal with the Decepticons or the Autobots again, never come near this mudball _or any organic planets_ again, never deal with organics themselves again, and most importantly, _no more Skywarp._

It was just a fleeting fancy, and once again, reason prevailed against his instincts as Thundercracker would need fuel to go anywhere, not to mention the punishments that awaited deserters or the fact that he would almost certainly never be allowed back on Cybertron, no matter which faction won.

That left him to deal with the three "hybrids" as Starscream had called them. They didn't have official designations yet so they had taken to calling them S1, S2 and S3 for now, since at the moment they knew the three had no personalities to speak of and certainly no need for proper designations.

One of them kept on screaming, a high pain-filled noise, and its arm was at an odd angle that he'd never seen on a human before. The other loud one was repeatedly shouting Cybertronian curse words, which Skywarp would probably have said himself once he noticed something was wrong with one of them (if he had noticed and wasn't just trying to actually teach the brats said words). The final hybrid was quiet, to Thundercracker's relief, and he faintly recognised it as S3, the one which contained a piece of his own spark (that didn't mean he had to like the little pitspawn though).

Now he had to figure out how to solve this mess, disregarding the fact that he had _no _experience whatsoever in human bodies and how to repair them, no control over the cursing one…- _he didn't know how to solve this!_

In the end he'd had to call Starscream and explain the situation to his fuming Air Commander who'd been out flying for the first time in _ages_. Luckily the arm of the one hybrid (apparently S1, which was _unfortunately_ bound to Starscream to top everything else), was not broken only "dislocated", although Starscream still hadn't been too pleased about it.

There was nothing to be done about the swearing, since S2 did not know what it was saying was rude or insulting they could not discipline it.

All that had gone wrong under Skywarp's watch however did not lead to anything going wrong for Skywarp himself. _Instead _he was banned from going near the hybrids and Thundercracker was assigned to be their temporary caretaker for the times when Starscream was unavailable and until the time when the hybrids got introduced to more of the Decepticons under the pretence of "caretaking" (and again thanks to Skywarp's Stupid this had been postponed_ indefinitely_).

The moment Thundercracker after was told all of this he didn't think there could be _anything_ that would make him hate Skywarp more.

He was proven wrong when Skywarp did the unthinkable later when they were out of their Commanding Officers' collective earshot: he complained.

More precisely he complained about him not being allowed even in the vicinity of the brats, and since it was Megatron and not Starscream who'd ordered it he was actually planning to obey said orders.

There was no way Thundercracker could get out of this appalling situation yet Skywarp complained about his own situation like _he _was being punished. It wasn't slagging fair.

He hated Skywarp all the more for it.

* * *

Next chapter: Stunticon Folly (and it's not jolly)

Please, even if you don't like it review and tell me why (and for those who faved me, tell me about your favourite bits), or give criticism for improving it.

Eli


	4. Stunticon folly

A/N: The second of the babysitting stories. This one sets the scene for interaction with the Stunticons once the trio are a bit older. It also references another babysitting session which will be featured in the collection of extra stories, for now the reference is enough.

Apologies for the late update, New Year's was a bit hectic for me.

* * *

The majority of the youngest Decepticon combiner team was actually looking forward to babysitting, until that is they found out how much they _weren't _allowed to do around the brats, on pain of getting shot by both Nullrays and a Fusion cannon (Megatron and his SIC only cooperated in this so that they wouldn't have to go through the drama of creating hybrids from scratch again –and the fact that Starscream's spark would probably be damaged along with Skywarp's and Thundercracker's thus leaving the Decepticon leader to deal with the consequences- and the bitching).

This involved Motormaster restraining himself from squishing them whilst trying to discipline them as he normally did his team, Wildrider being banned from even being in the vicinity of the brats due to his track record of running over humans, which predictably only made him even more determined to get close to them (although he was thwarted this time by being given monitor duty – a hazardous task for his supervisor), and Breakdown being prohibited from using his special ability seeing as Starscream wasn't sure whether it would affect the hybrids or not. Dead End and Drag Strip were given no such injunctions, although Drag Strip was told by Megatron, to the effect of a venomous glare from Starscream at their leader, that his speeches on Decepticon Victory would be appropriate for the brats to hear.

It all started going downhill when S3 gave Breakdown the look Thundercracker usually reserved for when Skywarp was planning or doing something particularly obnoxious and idiotic. This took place whilst the Stunticon was attempting-and failing to coax her onto his hand from the floor onto which she and the others had unceremoniously been dumped by a particularly grumpy Thundercracker. Unfortunately this required Breakdown to be looking at the brat and so he was caught in the stare at full effect, abruptly losing the battle against his inherent paranoia and fleeing the little terror as fast as he could before Motormaster could order him to stay.

Motormaster, seeing an opening, left to "bring Breakdown back" (the gestalt of course knew he would beat Breakdown into scrap as punishment, drag him to the medbay, and wait out the repairs and Hook's scolding just to get out of the babysitting ordeal.), and thus they laid all the blame on him for the events that followed.

Meanwhile Drag Strip's bright colouring had attracted the attention of the other two hybrids and they readily climbed into his hands, whilst he started regaling them with tales of Decepticon Victory (mainly down to his amazing skills of course).

S3 was therefore left to Dead End's devices. He sighed and put his hand on the floor with a glum expression on his faceplates. She gave him the same look given to Breakdown, but eventually crawled onto his hand. Heaving another long-suffering sigh Dead End lifted her up, closer towards his body, unaware of the problems the movement of his hand was causing.

Some of her sour mood could be explained away by Thundercracker's disgruntled countenance earlier which in turn had affected her, however much of it came from a stomach-ache which had been affecting her since earlier in the day.

The movement caused her stomach to heave and… in the nicest words possible: it wasn't pretty.

As Dead End did not know much about humans (or hybrids) it therefore didn't occur to him, or Drag Strip for that matter, that something was wrong when S3 went pale.

Moments later, she spewed over the side of Dead End's hand which had unfortunately brought her close enough to his frame so that the bile spattered straight onto it.

There was an appalled silence as the Stunticons tried-and failed to process how the rancid fluid, which appeared to be a mixture of decomposed organic substances and energon, had got onto what had previously been _pristine _plating.

Drag Strip recovered first, mostly because the stuff didn't land on him and also because it smelled _terrible_, and withdrew from Dead End, acting as if he had Cosmic Rust. Then he remembered the little bombs of repulsiveness sitting in his _own_ hands.

The two things weren't even looking at him, their optics (or human eyes? Drag Strip wasn't sure) were focused on the other wretched little spawn of Unicron.

So he made his hands shiver a little, as shaking them would have dislodged the brats, so that they abruptly looked round at him.

He gave them his most threatening glare and said: "If you try and do that to me I'll squish you!"

* * *

Thundercracker later resolved to make the Stunticons' lives a misery since he was the one who had to pick up the brats again (Skywarp still couldn't be trusted with them and all the other 'sitters were busy), and S3 was covered in her own partially-decayed nutrients mix (with energon or course) which meant that he came into contact with the stuff (his plating would never smell the same again!).

He could start by giving Megatron or Starscream a very poor report of the Stunticons' babysitting; Motormaster and Breakdown were missing and both Dead End and Drag Strip were catatonic when he arrived (it later turned out that the latter had been _screamed_ into submission after his threatening words, thus shorting out several important processor functions although it hadn't been as bad as with Astrotrain and The Scream of I want).

Motormaster was banned from ever leaving his team alone with the brats again, Dead End refused be in the same room as them, Breakdown refused to be alone in the same room as them (and only held them if they were transported to his hands so he wouldn't have to look at them) and Drag Strip simply kept his distance when he further regaled them with tales of Decepticon Victory.

As for Wildrider? He still wasn't allowed near them.

The entire Stunticon team was forced to attend an insufferable lecture a la Starscream on humans (and hybrids), and their "bodily emissions", which left them reeling and praying for one of Mixmaster's processor-bleaching concoctions.

The odour refused to leave the Stunticon quarters for several months, eventually succumbing to Breakdown's usage of two tonnes of air fresheners.

The final result was the expected one. The Stunticons, _as a unit,_ hated babysitting and all similar duties and Starscream congratulated himself on this particularly entertaining teambuilding exercise.

* * *

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Next Chapter: Onslaught on the subject of Combiners (and babysitting)

Eli


	5. Combaticon win-Constructicon Confusion

**AN:** Sorry for this being late, I had a lot of trouble with this chapter, as you can see (and I had a host of other stories that I'm writing). So…

You guys get two snippets for this chapter. Both of them were planned to be full chapters in their own right, but alas it was not to be. First Part is Combaticon Win, mostly with Onslaught reflecting on the upcoming "duty" he is going to perform and Second Part is Constructicon Confusion which is a snippet of Dialogue between the Constructicons when they end up with babysitting duty. Which bit of Dialogue belongs to which Constructicon is something I'll leave up to you readers.

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**Combaticon win**

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There were many things one could say about Onslaught; that he was a master tactician, that he wasn't exactly _loyal _to Megatron, that he had one pit of an irritating team and that he hated the Stunticons more than any other Decepticons, including Megatron.

No one would have guessed he'd be good at babysitting.

It was one of the things other Decepticons- and Autobots for that matter- didn't consider, being a Gestalt Leader was very much like babysitting in that you had to know what you were looking after and plan accordingly. For the Combaticons this meant that Onslaught always had a list of things that needed to be "acquired" or to "disappear" for Swindle to peruse, something that needed to be destroyed or bashed for Brawl, an assignment for Blast-Off which would take him as far away from the others as possible and for Vortex a variety of tasks intended to sate his curiosity (and psychotic personality) concerning their current planet. So it wasn't that much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that he'd be well-prepared for three under-developed brats (Starscream had finally understood that human children needed to be taught things, not expect their programming to tell them from birth), to come tramping into _his _base.

He may not have known Starscream's trio of destruction quite as well, but he _was _a master tactician and not an idiot, so he could make an informed decision based on what little facts he knew, combined with a little guesswork to come up with a fairly accurate plan on how to keep them occupied and from causing chaos throughout the base.

This naturally included getting rid of all his teammates by giving them additional tasks; keeping the trio _unharmed_ was vital to the team's survival and Onslaught didn't quite _trust _most of his team to be able to keep the brats alive, let alone unharmed.

The next part was giving them something entertaining to do, for this he'd prepared some datapads with games, logic puzzles and flashing bright lights; the latter only because the Skywarp's little parasite, as Starscream "affectionately" called it, was known to take after its host and would therefore like something flashy with no educational value whatsoever. Although… Onslaught could tweak the datapad so that the little thing would learn the names of the colours; it might earn the gestalt leader some favour with Starscream for helping educate the brat. Favour with any of the commanding officers was always good, especially in the case of _his_ team who didn't have the luxury of some sort of camaraderie amongst the other Decepticons who had awakened on earth.

The other new Combiner team, the Stunticons, might also not have that "friendship" or, in other words, network of connections but they did have Megatron's favour and that was singularly more important than the favour of Soundwave and Starscream put together (although those did help more in the long run). Unfortunately for them, Megatron's attention and patience for their antics would run out the moment it hindered the Decepticons in a battle and their leader looked for someone to blame. It couldn't always be Starscream, he'd have been demoted long ago if everything going wrong was the Air Commander's fault. The Stunticons had not yet gathered enough experience in the field of Decepticon politics to adequately shift the blame onto someone else (aka Starscream) so they would fall out of Megatron's favour even if Onslaught didn't interfere. And he would simply because revenge is a dish best served frozen and Onslaught had still not forgiven the amateurs for beating Bruticus. Pathetic, recently sparked Finding someone for Megatron who could be blamed for any fiasco that would pop up would put Onslaught firmly in Megatron's favour, completing the usual Decepticon method of "use someone convenient to improve your standing".

"Babysitting", as some of the more earth-savvy mechs put it, was simply an extension of the usual Decepticon method which tacticians like Onslaught had brought to perfection. He planned to volunteer for this task as often as he could without it looking suspicious. He'd gain influence with the little would-be spies and he'd gain favour with Starscream by training them a little.

All it would take was looking after three mostly-humans who weren't even remotely as bad as his own team. It wouldn't be hard at all.

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**Constructicon Confusion**

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"Slaggit get back here!"

"You still having trouble with the trio?"

"With two of them; _just_ when you think you've caught one the other pulls off some stunt –_do not touch that you little wretch- _and I lose the one I've almost caught."

"Come here, I'll try to deal with them."

"NO! You'll just mess it up. The main problem is that I've had to resort to calling for them by saying 'you' or 'brat'. They haven't got proper names which makes obedience an _issue_."

"What, didn't Starscream give them any? Or any of the others?"

"He named them S1, S2 and S3. The S stands for subject. The most slagging unoriginal designations I've ever come across. They don't respond to them either."

"How abut we give them some then? It's not like anyone else seems to be taking an interest and Screamer's head is so far up his aft it'll be a Primus-endorsed miracle if he ever gets it out and gets a good look at reality. Come on, he thought humans were pre-programmed with modules that instructed them how to walk and talk."

"Well it's not like any of us knew any better."

"We have better things to do than to wonder how human lifecycles work."

"Besides isn't _he _Megatron's appointed human expert?"

"Only when compared to the rest of us."

"Back to the task at hand, name the brats and get it over with so we can teach them some _discipline._"

"That's S2 right? Skywarp's?"

"Yeah."

"He can be squirmy then, you always complain that Skywarp squirms when you're trying to repair him."

"Makes sense. What do we name ol' Screamer's one?"

"Screech, as a homage to our _beloved_ Air Commanders favourite method of addressing us."

"There was also that story of Screech screeching at Astrotrain- and Drag Strip. Apparently the pitch and loudness can be 'inherited'. Or something like that."

"Screech it is. And Thundercracker's?"

"Something with an S or a T, just to keep the pattern."

"Storm?"

"Doesn't suit it. It's too well-behaved for that.

"Still?"

"That's a word we actually use in conversation. No."

"Thunder?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because it's contrived and doesn't suit the brat."

"Oh."

"Thundercracker tends to sulk a lot… sulky?"

"Well I can see Starscream being quite amused at that one… and Thundercracker acting exactly like it."

And that was that.

To Starscream's chagrin, the nicknames stuck.

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And that _is _that for this chapter. I might revise it at a later date and add some actual sentences between the dialogue, but for now I wrote what I wanted to.

This is supposed to be a collection of Snippets after all. It doesn't really matter whether they're full chapters anyway.

Hope you guys enjoyed this, next chapter is "Spawn of Starscream" (ft Soundwave).

Review please!

Eli


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